


An Anchor

by themegalosaurus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Breathplay, Bunker Sex, Burns, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Post-Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:43:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9592700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: “I can’t stop thinking,” Sam says, and the joke’s almost at Dean’s lips before he catches it, swallows it. Not now, not with Sam hovering fretful and indecisive and asking for something, the outline of which Dean is just starting to recognise through the fog of everything unspoken.Post-imprisonment, Sam gets some bad news and doesn't take it too well. Dean tries to work out how to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winchestersinthedrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchestersinthedrift/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for Becky ([winchestersinthedrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaneharriet/pseuds/winchestersinthedrift)) and is at least superior to last year's birthday fic in that firstly it is much less grievously late (three weeks instead of three months) and secondly I did not require Becky to beta it herself. Instead I had the very great benefit of a super thorough and good-humoured beta from Ariel ([indefinissable](http://archiveofourown.org/users/indefinissable/pseuds/indefinissable)), who was a delight to work with and has done wonders with my syntax throughout.
> 
> Anyway, Becky, last year I delivered you [comedy porn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6371311) but this year please enjoy a healthy portion of ANGSTY PORN instead. And I hope everybody else who isn't Becky enjoys it too.

Dean finds out first, not long after they get out of prison. He’s browsing news stories on the internet, business as usual, sifting idly through report after report of brutality and violence and death. When he sees the post, a four-paragraph update about a kid shot dead at a rest stop in Nebraska, he almost skims past it. Shootings aren’t usually their bag. Then he sees the name, two and a half paragraphs down the page. Magda Petersen. A nasty shiver crawls up his spine.

He looks back at the headline. ‘Execution-style killing’, they call it. Christ. Poor kid. And the date… the day she was killed, that’s the worst of it, because it’s the day after they left her. She never made it to the aunt in California, didn’t get even halfway there. He and Sam were probably still on the road back to the bunker, and poor fucking traumatised Magda was getting shot in the head. Shit.

Dean rubs a hand over his chin, pressing hard, dragging the flesh over bone. He doesn’t want Sam to know about this. But he should tell him, right? He knows he should, because Sam will find out eventually. It’s just that… well, since they got outta lockup Sam’s been kind of a mess. It’s not surprising, Dean supposes, after two months in a tiny room. At night he hears his brother pacing the corridors, and in the mornings over breakfast Sam is haggard, unslept. He’s jumpy, too, maybe because of the sleeplessness. Dean has begun to find his own shoulders tensing in sympathy as Sam startles at every dropped book, every clattering plate. It’s starting to remind him uncomfortably of the period after Sam’s hell-memories returned, his brother twitchy and grey-faced and continually glancing sideways at horrors that Dean couldn’t see. He doesn’t like it. And this news about Magda is only going to make things worse.

He’s still staring at the website, unseeing and undecided, when Sam comes into the room.

“What’s wrong?”

Dean’s silent just a beat too long. Sam hurries behind him in a couple quick steps, leans over with a hand on his shoulder to look at the screen. When he sees it he gasps, sharp and harsh, and his fingers grip tight into Dean’s back.

“Sammy,” Dean says, turning, but Sam’s already retreating up and away. His face has gone white.

“Shit,” Sam says blankly, “shit.”

“Sammy -” Dean starts again.

“I told her,” Sam says, fiercely, “that it would be alright. I said she could call me and I’d look after her and it would be alright.” His fingers flutter at his sides, jerking in the nervous gestures that Dean knows mean his brother’s grip on reality is starting to waver.

“ _Sam_.”

“Yeah.” Sam balls his hands into fists. Dean sits up, expecting the kind of violence that he might turn to himself in venting this same grief-stricken frustration. He smashed up the library the night that Kevin died, and it hadn’t done anything real; but it had _helped_ him in that first dreadful directionless moment to do something, to change something, even if it was only to break it.

That’s Dean, though, and Sam’s instincts are different. Instead of lashing out at the furniture with a hand or foot, he breathes deep for a couple seconds, muscles taut, and then strikes the side of his fist swift and punishing into his thigh. The impact is loud and flat. Sam’s mouth is tugged tight and unhappy. He hits himself again, with the same violence, fist to thigh, and Dean says, “hey.”

“Sorry,” Sam says. He stays for a moment, rigid, then strikes himself a third time, hard enough to bruise. Dean is readying himself to intervene when Sam shifts, relaxes. “I’m done.” He breathes out, deep like a sigh but cut short so there’s no relief in it, raises a hand to tug at his hair. “I’m gonna go for a run,” he says abruptly, then turns on his heel and walks out, past the big map table and down the corridor toward his room. Dean’s left sitting in front of his laptop, with the screen still showing all the gruesome details of Magda’s death, tingling all over with the sick discomfort of having seen Sam lay into himself like that.

He hasn’t moved by the time Sam sets out, black-clad and silent in his sneakers and hoodie ten minutes after; is still there, in fact, when Sam gets back an hour and something later, breathing heavy and so drenched in sweat that Dean’s first thought is that it must be raining.

“No,” says Sam, “Just ran hard.” He doesn’t stop to chat, only grimaces at Dean - peacemaking; _it’s not you, it’s me_ \- and keeps on walking. Before long, the ancient pipes start clanking and the boiler groans into life.

Okay. This seems - well, not really okay, but not the kind of disaster that Dean can do anything to fix just yet. He closes the browser, shuts his laptop and stands up to go and make coffee. They bought a new machine not long ago and it’s good, but slow. While it’s brewing, Dean stretches, scratches, empties a bunch of mouldy takeout containers from the fridge, and eventually checks his phone. Mom’s played a new move on Words with Friends and he gets caught up for a bit in hitting the button to shuffle his tiles. In the end he has to settle for a mediocre 22 points, but just as he plays it the coffee machine pings so he doesn’t waste time regretting it. When Mom’s response buzzes back almost immediately, he sits at the table with his coffee and shoots her a text. She’s up in Wyoming, some case she picked up in the newspapers, a haunting at an elementary school. It seems to be going okay. She’s killing time, waiting for nightfall so she can burn some bones, apparently watching some law show Sam recommended. Huh. He tells her to enjoy herself, flips through his messages, sends Jody a quick ‘what’s up?’.

Effectively distracted by his phone, Dean is two strong cups of coffee down and starting to wash up his mug when the shock of cold water from the hot tap makes him flinch. In the walls, the pipes are still rattling. He glances at his watch and, Jesus, how long has Sam been in the shower? He worries his teeth over the inside of his lip. Maybe things aren’t ticking over after all.

There’s no outer lock on the bathroom door, just a row of stalls inside. Dean walks in, booted feet on wet tiles, blinking in the clouds of steam that roll over him. Sam’s the one that sweats, usually, but the room is warm enough now that the droplets standing out on Dean’s forehead are more than just condensation. The air is thick, and the vertical lines of walls and doors have started to blur, wavering in the rising heat.

The noise of the shower and the gradation of the steam direct Dean to the corner cubicle, at the far end of the room. Reaching it, he sees Sam standing with his back to the door, leant forward with his head and forearm propped against the wall. The water is streaming down over his shoulders, and even through the mist, Dean can see that his brother’s golden skin has turned lobster-pink under the spray.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, cautious, raising his voice just enough to be heard. “You wanna get out before you boil?”

Sam turns his head, stares at him for a moment uncomprehending and blank. His hair is plastered in dark strands down over his face. “Dean?” he says.

“Come on, man,” says Dean, falsely cheerful. “You’re killing my hot water. I need to wash up.”

“Oh!” says Sam, and blinks into life again, his features flickering guilt and shame before settling into their usual careful amicability. “Sorry. Sorry, I just zoned out a little.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Dean, and tugs open the unlocked door. He reaches in across the stall to shut off the water, soaking his shirt and one leg of his jeans in the process. Sam leans back, pushing himself against the wooden divider, away from Dean’s arm. It isn’t personal, Dean’s pretty sure of that, so it would be stupid of him to care.

The water weighing down his clothes is scalding, and when he looks at Sam he can see the red splotches of heat dappling down his brother’s torso. Sam’s muscles stand out strong and wiry, a layer of much-needed fat stripped away by those two months in lockup. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t look good. Desire tugs sharp in Dean’s gut as his eyes linger over the damp mat of hair across Sam’s chest; but the feeling sours swiftly into discomfort when his gaze stutters on the blank space that used to hold his brother’s tattoo. Shit. Sam needs to get it redone. The absence bothers Dean every time he sees it, but he hasn’t yet found the right way to begin the conversation about putting it back. (A complication: it’s not just about keeping Sam safe. They have - had - the same tattoo, in the same place. Dean liked that. The loss of it feels like the loss of a connection, like he’s trailing a loose string from the front of his chest. But, well. How to say that, when it was Dean who severed the cord?)

He’s staring. Sam shifts awkwardly for a moment under his scrutiny, then reaches up past Dean to the towel he’s hung over the door. He wraps it around his waist, looks down at the floor, Dean’s dirty boots in a puddle of soapy water.

“Dinner?” Dean says.

“Uh,” says Sam, looking around as though for help.

Dean steels himself. “Dinner,” he says again, firmly. “Go put your clothes on and I’ll have something on the table. ‘Kay?”

Sam’s gaze has settled somewhere over Dean’s shoulder, but he nods absently and shuffles in the direction of his room, leaving big wet footprints along the corridor, warm enough that they begin to evaporate before he turns the corner. Dean pauses for a moment, watching the traces of his brother disappear.

In the kitchen, he pokes through the fridge again and ends up making spaghetti with meatballs; not too complicated, but filling and quick. He considers the plate and then adds a handful of salad for Sam, big soft leaves that drift floppy from his fingers, the end of a cucumber, sliced thin.

Sam turns up in the kitchen just as Dean’s laying out the cutlery, still pink and steaming slightly, his hair curling at the nape of his neck. He slides into his seat, picks up a beer from where Dean’s set them in the middle of the table. “Thanks,” he says.

“No problem,” says Dean, and as he walks around to put Sam’s plate in front of him, he leans over and touches his lips to his brother’s forehead; the brush of a kiss just under his hairline on the right-hand side.

Sam stays still, accepts the gesture, but when Dean follows up by running a knuckle down over his cheekbone, he shrinks away. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, Dean, I just. Not right now.”

“Okay,” Dean says, and skirts the table to sit at the opposite corner. He wouldn’t… like, he doesn’t _need_ it, he’s fine, but it’s been a while. It’s been a long time, actually; since before Amara didn’t kill him, before Mom. Which, well, it’s not like Dean was totally comfortable jumping his brother with their mother down the hallway. That had - she _has_ \- definitely shifted the dynamic between them, has made him think about himself and Sam in a way he’d thought he’d gotten over a long time ago. Dean feels guilty about a lot of shit in his life. He doesn’t need to be worrying about this, too, this which at its best has been the thing supporting him, solid and strong. And, well. Things haven’t been straightforward, the past few years, and Dean’s not pretending that it hasn’t been partly his fault, but he’d just recently started to feel like they might be falling back into place. So even if he can do without the sex, for now, he’d like to know if and when it might be back on the table. It’s not… yeah, it’s about more than just sex.

Still, Dean’s not a fucking dog. He can see that now might not be the moment. So he leaves it be.

Sam’s quiet as they eat, the only sound the chink-scrape of cutlery on porcelain. Dean looks over at him a few times, trying to formulate how to ask the question, before he says, “I’m sorry, Sammy,” instead.

Sam rolls a meatball across his plate, spears it deliberate. He doesn’t look up. For a moment Dean thinks he isn’t going respond at all, but eventually he says, “It’s okay. I mean. It’s not okay, but I’m okay. I’m just… I just need some time to deal with it.” He pauses. “I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” says Dean, uncertain.

Sam eats the meatball, curls the last of his spaghetti around his fork. He looks up at Dean, just quickly, smiles, but it evaporates almost instantly, like his face can’t hold the expression, leaving Sam weighted down with blank dejection. He drops his gaze back to his plate. “You know who it was, right?” he says.

“Well…” says Dean.

“The Brits.”

Sam’s gripping his fork so tight that his knuckles have gone white.

“We can’t, Sam,” Dean says. “We can’t do anything right now. You know that.”

Sam doesn’t look at him, just stares down at his empty plate.

“When Crowley’s finished… whatever it is he’s doing,” Dean says, and he hates it, don’t think he doesn’t; hates that they’re relying on the goddamn King of Hell to tidy up their mess. “When the NSA is off our backs, dude, we can make those dickwads pay. Ketch,” he says, with a pang of regret for the grenade launcher. “Lady Fuckface. Whoever.”

“Yeah, when,” says Sam, and he scrapes back his chair, stands abruptly. “Sorry. Thanks for dinner. I need to go to bed.”

When Dean walks past Sam’s bedroom three hours later, at midnight, the light is still shining yellow under the crack in the door. He can hear a sound from inside, the repetitive creak of a floorboard and Sam’s regular, punchy exhale. Sit-ups; push-ups, maybe. Whatever it is, Sam isn’t sleeping. Dean hovers for a second by the door; lifts his hand, even, to the handle, before changing his mind. In bed, he lies awake for half an hour before slipping into troubled, disconnected dreams.

It’s only chance that Dean’s there the next morning when Sam burns his hand. He’s in the pantry, halfway into one of the big metal cupboards looking for a box of macaroni he definitely put there six months ago. On his knees and scrabbling through half-opened packets of pulses, he catches the sound from the kitchen; a clang of metal and Sam’s sharp, short cry. Dean’s out of the cupboard so fast that he hits his head on the underside of the countertop, so he’s half-staggering, still blinking away stars, when he enters the kitchen and sees Sam on the floor beside the open oven. There’s a tray on the floor and the components of the fancy granola Sam likes to make himself are scattered underfoot. Sam’s cradling his hand, where Dean can see a thick red line developing bright across his brother’s palm.

“Sam,” he says urgently. “Dude.” Sam doesn’t move and so Dean, less dizzy now, moves forward and tugs him up by the shoulders. “Cold tap,” he says, and nudges Sam over to the sink. Once he’s got the water running icy as he can, his own hand around Sam’s wrist as he holds the burn under the flow, he looks up at his brother. “What was that?”

Sam shakes his head. “I just… sorry, I just didn’t think, I guess. Went to pick it up without a glove. Stupid.” He moves to pull his hand away, but Dean holds it firm.

“Ten full minutes, Sammy. You know that.”

“Okay,” says Sam, but he’s tense already, holding himself rigid in a way that Dean can’t make sense of. He wonders if it’s embarrassment, or frustration, but a glance at Sam’s face, the whites of his eyes, says otherwise.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Sam says. “I’m fine.” He stops pulling, lets Dean hold him. Two minutes go by. “When I, uh.” Dean waits. “The, um, the British Men of Letters. When they were holding me, you know, trying to get me to talk. They had this whole set up, with a hosepipe.”

“Okay.”

“The burns aren’t - I mean, you saw my foot. It wasn’t nice, but the burns I can deal with. You know. I just. You know I’m not good with the cold.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Dean. He does know it, would find it hard to forget after the nights post-Hell when Sam just couldn’t stop shivering, when they’d layer up blankets and comforters until Dean was broiling underneath them, weighted down by the mountain of insulation, and _still_ Sam would shudder with cold at his side. Or the time after that case they’d worked up in the Washington mountains during those months of Sam’s slow wearing down, when Dean had spun around in the snowy woods and found himself alone, had hurried back terrified through crunching branches and stumbled on Sam hunched chilly at the foot of a tree, folded over into himself and murmuring desperate self-reassurance.

He looks down at Sam’s hand under the steady flow of the faucet, feels the conflicting, protective pull. Anxiety now, or blisters later? It’ll probably already be anxiety later, anyway, and so he holds firm for another two minutes before letting Sam go.

Sam pulls his hand from under the faucet just a little too fast, cups it close against his chest. Dean holds out his own hand, _show me_ , but Sam’s already backing off.

“Just gonna, uh,” he says, and he’s gone.

“I’ll go ahead and clean this up, then,” says Dean to the empty air, mildly annoyed but mostly kind of shaken, both by the adrenaline shock that always accompanies Sammy getting hurt, and by the reference to what that English bitch did to him in the cellar. He doesn’t… well, that’s something else they haven’t really hashed out. Dean had been too absorbed in the moment of Mary’s restoration to do more than tease his brother hopefully, to feel the relief of the rolled eyes Sam had offered in response. He had let himself think that if Sam was getting pissy with him over it then, really, he must be okay. Ugh. The cellar, the cell, and now Magda dead, and Sam withdrawing, retreating into his shell, flinching repeatedly away from Dean’s hands. It fucking sucks, and the only thing Dean can do about it is scrub furiously at the kitchen floor.

He gives Sam space for the rest of the day, though that doesn’t mean he isn’t checking up on him. In the afternoon he walks past the shooting range to hear Sam blasting rounds into the paper targets at a rate that sounds almost manic. Later still, he runs into his brother in the library, sitting on the floor with the whole contents of the card catalogue around him, sorting through and alphabetising like that’s gonna fix his head.

“Coffee?” says Dean cautiously, and Sam nods, but when Dean drops in again a few hours later his brother is gone and the mug is sitting cold and full on the table just where Dean left it. He’s pretty sure that Sam hasn’t eaten anything since the night before, and he looks in the fridge for something that might tempt him but they’re all out of everything except frozen pizza and beer.

Sam’s bedroom door is closed, and Dean knocks and opens it to find his brother shutting his laptop guilty-quick. Caught before the screen clicked shut, the afterimage of Lady Bevell hovers bright before Dean’s eyes. There’s a long pause.

“Interrupting your private time, Sammy?” Dean says eventually, with a laboured leer. He drops the performance when Sam looks at him, unmoved. “I’m heading out for groceries. You want anything?”

Sam’s lip curls at the suggestion, though when he speaks his tone is neutral. “Nah, I’m good.” He turns away, turns the laptop toward him, opens it again.

Dean spends the drive into town with the music turned up loud, singing along aggressively. In the store, he stands in front of a rack of beef jerky for upwards of ten minutes before the girl behind the counter coughs a little awkwardly and says “Anything you’re looking for, sir?”

“Nope,” says Dean, shaking himself, and he’s halfway home before he realises that the only things he bought are more pizza, more beer and a pack of the goddamn jerky just so he didn’t look weird. Fuck it. He’s gonna… he’ll let Sam sleep tonight, he guesses, but in the morning he’s gonna get up at fucking six o’clock and go get his brother a breakfast and make him eat it, and then they’re gonna sit down and work out what to do about those British dickbags and Sam’s gonna stop feeling like shit. And that’ll mean that Dean gets to stop feeling shitty too, for not having insisted that the girl stay with them, for being too lax about following through, for adding another mark in the wrong column of the long tally they both keep unspoken, upsetting the tenuous balance between ‘killed’ and ‘saved’.

He doesn’t bother checking Sam’s room when he gets in, just shoves a pizza in the oven and eats the whole greasy disc, not wasting time with a napkin, licking his fingers of tomatoes and cheese. Might as well take advantage of Sam’s absence, eating how he wants without his brother’s disgusted scrutiny. Might as well be nice to himself, given that Sam’s refusing any level of comfort.

The pizza tastes of plastic and cardboard, and it sits heavy in Dean’s stomach after he’s done. He washes it down with two or three beers too many and waits in the kitchen for a while, angry and aimless, before heading to bed. The alcohol and pizza churn uncomfortable inside him, combining with the particular tense anxiety of awaiting an unusually early alarm. More than once he dozes off and blinks awake startled and gasping, certain that it’s afternoon already, that he’s slept in, that Sammy’s up and gone.

He’s not sure what time it is - still deep in the night - when he hears a sound from the corridor. It’s not even a knock, really, just the graze of knuckles over the wood of Dean’s door.

“Yeah?” he says, sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp. Silence. “Sam?”

Another long pause, and then the handle turns and Sam’s there, in the doorway, soft in his track pants and grey cotton sweater. He’s pulled the ends of the sleeves right down over his hands, a gesture that whips Dean with staggering immediacy back to adolescence, back to Sam sitting hunched and skinny on the couch of the latest run-down motel, wrapped up defensive in a ratty old hoodie that was at once far too baggy and tragically short in the sleeves. It was around that time that Dean’s feelings for his brother started to shift, away from his comfortable big-brother superiority to a complicated combination of longing and fear. Sam’s departure had felt imminent from the moment the kid turned fourteen, and Dean spent the next five years walking on eggshells, terrified of doing or saying the thing - whatever it might be - that would finally drive his brother to make up his mind and go.

It still nags at him now, sometimes; the same love-soaked fear. Sam, poised on the threshold. Isn’t he always?

“Hey,” Sam says now, talking unsteady into the silence. “Could you. I wondered.”

“Yeah,” says Dean. He swings his legs out from under the blanket, sits sideways on the edge of the bed but doesn’t get up. Sam hasn’t moved from the door. “What is it?”

“I can’t stop thinking,” Sam says, and the joke’s almost at Dean’s lips before he catches it, swallows it. Not now, not with Sam hovering fretful and indecisive and asking for something, the outline of which Dean is just starting to recognise through the fog of everything unspoken.

“I can’t stop thinking about, uh, about Magda, the shitty… she had a shitty life. And then she died. And it’s not… I know we’ll, we’ll get to it. But I can’t… it’s in my head. And I just need to not think about it, just for a bit.” Sam looks down at his hand, the blistered palm. “And I didn’t want to, uh. You know.” He looks up again at Dean and lifts his shoulders minutely, not a shrug so much as a gesture of acknowledgement.

“Yeah,” says Dean, “no, yeah, Sammy, that’s good.” He doesn’t look too close at the rest of it, doesn’t stop to dwell on the anxiety Sam’s admission lets in. Things might have been rough but Sam had been doing pretty good, he’d thought; had hoped they were beyond all that. “I got you,” he says. “Come here.”

Sam nods, and moves towards him, hesitant steps on bare feet. When he gets near, Dean reaches out and takes his hand; tugs Sam a little closer, until his brother’s standing right between his open knees. Dean lifts Sam’s hand in both his own, holds it in front of his eyes. He looks at the shiny blister stretched fat across the skin. Careful, he brushes his thumb over the burn. Sam doesn’t move. He holds quiet, looking down at Dean with steady hazel eyes as Dean brings the hand to his lips, kisses it, lets it go. For a moment, stillness; and then Sam moves, tracing his fingertips feather-light around the shell of Dean’s ear.

Okay. Okay, they’re doing this. Dean shuffles back a little on his ass, then leans forward to grip the back of Sam’s legs, just above the knee. He tugs, _come here_ , and Sam obeys, moving forward as Dean moves back. He sets his knees onto the bed on either side of Dean’s hips; drops back cautious, balancing his weight, half-sitting in Dean’s lap.

“Come on,” Dean says, settling himself onto the bed, “Ain’t gonna break.”

“Yeah?” says Sam, drily; but he listens, relaxing his body, lowering himself properly now so that his knees are on the mattress but the bulk of his weight is resting back on Dean’s thighs.

“There you go,” says Dean. He slides his hands up Sam’s back, under the sweater, splaying his fingers across his brother’s warm skin. He looks up. Sam’s so close, like this, his arms over Dean’s shoulders and his hair falling soft around his face; around Dean’s face, closing the pair of them in. It’s perfect. Yeah okay, Sam is heavy - the kid is huge. But in the time before Dean’s muscles start seriously to strain, there’s something profoundly comforting in supporting the bulk of his brother, in the certainty of Sam’s solid weight on his.

“Hey,” says Dean. He lifts his chin, reaching, and Sam leans down to kiss him. It’s a thoughtful kiss, building slow, starting with the gentle brush of Sam’s just-open mouth and culminating, somehow, in Dean breathless and gasping, starving for oxygen but reluctant to break away. He draws back enough to gulp in a couple mouthfuls of hot damp air before pushing forward again with his jaw, his hands clenched tight into the solid muscle of Sam’s back as he bites at his brother’s lips, licking deep, sucking messy on Sam’s tongue.

He doesn’t realise how harsh he’s breathing until a big warm hand settles flat over his chest. Sam pulls back and looks at him, eyes narrowed.

“Okay?” he says.

Dean nods. His heart is pounding. He should - he needs to take a moment. He closes his eyes, drops his head forward; and Sam does the same, so that they’re forehead to forehead, nose to nose. Dean regulates, counting steady until his heartbeat finally slows. “Okay,” he says then, “okay,” and he pulls back, just a little bit, to where the tip of his nose is almost touching Sam’s. He looks up into Sam’s eyes. “How d’you wanna play this?”

Sam looks down, away, instantly. “Hey,” Dean says, and he reaches up to tap a knuckle under Sam’s chin. “Over here.” Reluctantly, Sam meets his gaze. “It’s okay,” Dean says. “Just tell me. Whatever.”

Sam licks his lips, inhales like he’s going to speak; holds the breath a long moment, and exhales. He tries again. “Sorry,” he says. “Um,” and then all in a rush, “Want you to fuck me.” His forehead furrows: anxiety. Determination. “And then.” His gaze skitters sideways again. “You know.”

Dean’s chest is tight, constricting, but one of them has to be calm. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Okay, Sammy, we can do that.” He slides his hands under Sam’s thighs, tugs uselessly. “You’re gonna have to move.”

Sam nods, shifts his weight and half-twists, half-falls forward and sideways onto the bed, face-first. He rolls over so he’s lying on his back with his head on the pillow, blinking up at Dean through a halo of chestnut hair.

“Right,” says Dean, holding firm against whatever’s building within him. He tugs at the bottom of Sam’s sweater, waits as Sam lifts himself (from the stomach, abs tensing) and pulls it over Sam’s head. Then he hooks his fingers over the waistband of Sam’s sweatpants, slides them down his brother’s long legs and off. Sam isn’t wearing underwear, and the softness, the naked vulnerability of him rakes claws over Dean’s insides. He licks his lips, goes to speak; and finds that the aching lump in his throat prevents him. He doesn’t… it’s not like they haven’t done this before. They’ve done it hundreds of times. Nobody died. But something in Sam’s tentative approach, tonight, feels different; catches a mood that Dean hadn’t even realised was missing the last couple of years. It isn’t - like - well, Dean hasn’t had any complaints. But this, what Sam wants and the way he’s asking for it, shamefaced and needy? It’s raw, open, flesh peeled back to expose the nerve, a stripped wire sparking an electric shock of intimacy hot through Dean’s veins.

He clears his throat. “You gotta stay with me, Sammy, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Sam, and he props himself up on his elbows, looking down at Dean with dark eyes, a little fearful. He’s not - well, he wants it, Dean knows he wants it, he’s lying naked on Dean’s bed with his legs open just wide enough for Dean to crawl up between them, to hook his arms over Sam’s thighs and slide his palms up over Sam’s body, raising goosebumps on his brother’s skin. But Sam’s not hard, not yet, not really; and when Dean leans down and sets his mouth on his brother's cock, the velvety softness starts to stiffen and fill. The thrill of it is immediate, dizzying. Dean closes his lips over the head, gentling his tongue over Sam’s salt-slick skin. Above him, Sam inhales, a stuttering gasp of surprise. His fingers brush softly over Dean’s face, down the side of his jaw; and his hips push infinitesimally up toward Dean’s mouth.

It’s gratifying, the movement, Sam’s steely discipline starting to slip; and it’s good here, between Sam’s strong thighs, the scent of Sam thick in his nostrils and the taste of his brother on his tongue. But this isn’t it, tonight, this is the means to an end, and once Dean’s sure that Sam’s as hard as he’s getting, he lets go, regretfully, with one last long lick up Sam’s shaft. He kisses the inside of Sam's thigh and then moves away, scooting across the bed to rummage in the nightstand where he keeps his stuff.

“Okay,” says Dean, when he’s back between Sam’s legs. He squeezes a shiny glob of lube into his palm; rubs it between his hands to warm it; and brushes a tentative fingertip over Sam’s hole, watching his brother’s face carefully as Sam’s mouth falls open, soft.

“ _Oh,_ ” says Sam, quiet and surprised, and Dean doesn’t wait for more, slicks himself thoroughly and presses in, first one finger and then two, pushing outward against his brother's hot, sensitive insides.

Sam doesn’t say anything after that first sweet sound; but after maybe five minutes of Dean’s careful manipulation he’s gasping, heaving big shuddering breaths, a thin sheen of sweat shimmering damp across his skin. His hands flex rhythmically over the sheets, opening and closing with the involuntary motions of some deep-sea bloom.

“Okay,” says Dean again, and slides in a third finger, eases them apart a little as he moves all three inside. The motion is enough to coax a noise from somewhere in Sam’s chest, a long low cry, not distress but the recognition of a loss of control. Dean grips his other hand around Sam’s thigh, squeezes tight and reassuring. “I got you,” he says.

“Yes,” says Sam, hurried. “Yes, yep, I know, Dean, I know.”

Dean watches his fingers move in and out of Sam’s body, the slide easier now, easy enough. He pulls them out, wipes his hand on the sheets, sits up. Sam lifts his head. His body is trembling; his eyes huge.

“Hey,” Dean says. He tears open the condom wrapper, rolls it on quickly. “I’m here.” He runs a hand up Sam’s thigh, again, then moves forward, lifts Sam’s legs to settle around his hips, the ankles crossed behind him at the base of his spine.

“Ready?” he asks, and Sam says

“Yes, yes yes.”

It’s been a long time, and maybe that’s part of it, but Dean’s not usually worried about being careful with Sam; he knows his brother, knows how hard he can take it, knows that Sam likes it with an edge of pain. But now, these past few days, Sam’s been so prickly-fragile, this thing between them so uncertain that Dean finds himself holding his breath as he finally pushes into his brother, slow and steady with one guiding hand on himself and the other braced against Sam’s stomach, holding firm.

“Dean,” says Sam soft and cracked and Dean looks into his eyes, holds Sam’s gaze as emotions flicker over his face, firelight-rapid.

“Yeah?” he says, and Sam nods, reaches up to grip Dean’s biceps tight. Dean takes it steady at first, a long drag out and then the gradual push back in, a leisurely rhythm that accelerates slowly as Sam’s hips begin to move in tandem with his own. Dean is keeping it together, more or less, but he’s struggling; it feels as though all the worry he’s compressed inside is being wrung out by the pressure of his brother around him, pooling liquid somewhere in his lungs to either drown him or to float away.

“Please,” says Sam then, and he drops his head back, exposing the long vulnerable line of his throat. Dean swallows. Obedient, he sets his hand around it, the V of his thumb and fingers tucked under the centre point of Sam’s jaw. He presses, not too hard, feeling his way carefully, full-body conscious of Sam’s pulse against his skin. It’s enough. Sam's head tips back further and his body tightens by notches, spine arching taut in a euphoric bow. His long fingers clutch at the empty air, and his hips begin to judder out of time.

Dean’s own heartbeat is thudding in his ears, deafening, and his hand wants to falter but he doesn’t let it, steeling himself like the unyielding anchor Sam needs him to be.

It’s a long fifteen seconds before Sam reaches up with an open hand and taps twice in quick succession at Dean's side. Dean lets go, straight away, thumb and fingers uncurling, drops down into his elbows as Sam falls gasping onto the bed. He's fine, he's okay, and Dean finds himself relaxing, the tension he's been carrying since Sam kissed him unspooling inside. It’s not that Dean doesn’t trust himself to be careful, to do this as safely as it can be done; but the exchange, _tap-release_ , makes him realise that until this point he wasn’t quite certain that Sam would know when to stop. It’s not just about Sam trusting Dean with his life ( _again_ , still, after he’s fucked up so many times). It’s about trusting _Sam_ with Sam’s life, because for some time (for a long time, though most evidently in the last few years) Dean’s been queasily, constantly conscious of the lightness with which Sam is ready to throw that away. He’s seen it too many times: Sam bleeding out reckless, squeezing his veins into a witch’s bowl; Sam getting bit by zombies and never telling Dean that it happened for weeks. Sam stepping up and stepping forward, arm bared, the Mark of Cain flaring and blazing over his skin. Sam with his arm in bandages, bowing his head under Dean’s hammer. Sam on his knees, baring his neck to Dean’s scythe.

In some ways it’s not so different than when Sam was a teenager, the threat of his loss a constant buzz of anxiety at the back of Dean’s mind. Just like then, he can’t quite bring himself to confront it, tries his best to push it down and will it away; though that failed miserably, when Sam left for Stanford. He’s still shit-scared it won’t work out now. The image of Sam in that church with Crowley, grey-faced and haggard, poised for death; Dean can’t shake it, will never shake it, until he dies. That was about trust, or a lot of it was, and Dean not offering it. That’s what he can do here, for Sam, what he can give. He has to trust him with this. He has to. Or none of it works.

“Dean?” says Sam, a little hoarse, and Dean meets his gaze, smiles at his brother where Sam lies there so flushed and alive, and he _can_.

“I’m good,” he says, and means it, and finally starts to let himself enjoy this, rolling his hips in deliberate motions as Sam shifts over the mattress below. He’s vocalising, now, soft sounds coaxed out irregular as Dean moves inside him; a wordless, unguarded response that makes Dean ache. This is how it was, those few times they did this when Lucifer was tapping at Sam’s skull and Sam was desperate, strung-out sleepless and seeking oblivion; this is how it felt when Dean could offer him quiet, just for a while.

He doesn't rush things, lets it build slowly between them, drops his head to drag his teeth along Sam's jaw. Eventually, Sam says “Again,” and raises his chin, and Dean lifts his hand from the mattress and settles it across Sam's throat a second time. Sam shudders at the touch, a deep all-over shiver as Dean presses firmly upward with fingers and thumb. Again, Sam’s body curves back, strung tight, muscles straining. His dick brushes hot against Dean's stomach, sticky-shining and flushed dark with blood, and Dean pushes into him, driving forward, his own throat choking sore with consuming protective love he couldn’t begin to speak out loud.

Sam taps out after a little while and Dean lets go, but it's only a minute or two before his brother is asking for more. He’s stumbling over his words now, glassy-eyed and unfocused. “Thank you,” he says, “thank you, Dean, it’s just. It’s so good. I’m almost, I can.”

Dean doesn’t need to be told, knows well enough after all this time the exact pitch to which Sam must be strung before he snaps, unravels, frays apart. It’s not far off, now.

“Right,” he says, to himself more than to Sam; and takes Sam’s throat, Sam’s life, in his hand again; squeezes deliberate, just right, just enough. Five. Ten. As the seconds pass, Sam draws tight, every inch of him; bucks back and then finally his body stutters and he comes, creamy gouts spattering sticky-hot up his belly as he cries out high and thin with helpless relief.

“Oh,” Sam says, “oh, oh,” as Dean fucks him through it, gentle still but relentless, pushing his brother to the edge and beyond it, slowing finally as Sam’s dick starts to soften and those sweet whimpering noises go quiet.

Sam’s still panting hard, chest heaving, when he opens his eyes and looks directly up at Dean. “Keep going,” he says, “Dean, please, fuck me harder, don’t stop,” and Dean, spinning from the evening’s shifting tensions and so hard he’s almost sick with it, lets go; fucking into his brother fast now and urgent, with his hands on Sam’s waist and Sam bucking up to meet him. Dean’s buried so deep in Sam’s soft clutching insides and Sam’s moaning, juddery, the sounds shaken free like loose coins. “Oh,” he says, “oh please, Dean, please, come on,” and Dean does, pushes in deep a final time and shudders through his release, wrenching out a howling cry from somewhere deep in his gut.

He stays propped over Sam on his hands and knees a good few minutes, shivering, before Sam’s ankles uncross and his legs fall to the bed beneath him; before Sam’s hissed intake of breath prompts Dean to pull out at last. He knots off the condom and tosses it into the trashcan, where it lands with a soft metallic clang.

Sam exhales shakily, long and ragged, and curls over onto his side. Dean crawls up to lie behind his brother, bracketing the line of Sam’s body with his own. He buries his nose in the soft hair at the base of Sam’s skull, breathes in.

They’ve been lying together a few minutes when Dean realises that Sam is crying. He’s almost silent but his shoulders are shaking and his breath is coming in uneven hitching jerks. Dean brings his arm across Sam’s chest, holds tight, presses kisses to the back of Sam’s neck.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I got you, Sammy. It’s okay.”

They stay a long time like that before Sam finally snuffles in a snotty breath, slides out from under Dean’s arm and turns to face him. The yellow light of Dean’s bedside lamp illuminates the angled planes of Sam’s face, the tears shining across them, the puffy red rims of his eyes. He offers Dean a watery smile. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I’m just. It was good, I promise, I…”

“Yeah,” says Dean, “yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t think you were crying because I was so shit in bed.”

That surprises a hiccupy giggle out of Sam. “Sam Winchester cries his way through sex,” he says, and begins to laugh, giddy on the edge of hysterical.

“Yeah, alright,” says Dean, and when Sam doesn’t stop laughing, “ _alright_.” This time it works, and Sam subsides into something like sobriety. Dean pushes at Sam’s shoulder till his brother’s lying flat on his back, reaches up with his left hand to switch off the light. In the dark, he arranges himself on top of Sam, tucking his head into the soft space under Sam’s jaw, his bent leg hitched over both of Sam’s.

“You okay?” he says, into Sam’s neck.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “No. I don’t know.”

Dean nods.

“It did, uh, this helped,” Sam says. “Like, really helped. Thank you.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Dean, “you don’t gotta thank me for fucking you.” That sets Sam off laughing again, the same uncontrolled sound, and so after a minute Dean hauls himself up the bed a little and kisses his brother silent. Then he tucks himself back into the comfortable spot he’s made for himself against Sam’s body, closes his eyes, starts to drift. He isn’t - this isn’t over. They’ll wake up in the morning (and shit, Dean’s alarm is set for like three hours from now) and Sam will still feel guilty, because that’s Sam, and they’ll still have to work out how to get back at those limey sons of bitches for what they did to Magda. For right now, though, Dean’s done what he can. Sam is here underneath him and he isn’t going anywhere, not tonight.

“I love you,” Sam says.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Dean, warm and safe and breathing easy at last. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> It's impossible to overstate how much pleasure I take in getting comments on my work. JUST SAYIN'.


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